China

Typhoon heads inland after killing 115 on southeast coast

The most powerful typhoon to hit China in seven years roared inland Friday after killing 115 people and injuring more than 1,800 others along the coast and leaving a path of destruction though farms, towns and ports.

Typhoon Rananim weakened to a tropical storm after crossing into Jiangxi province, where it brought heavy rain to China’s central lakes region, meteorologists said.

Sixteen people were missing in Zhejiang province, just south of Shanghai, where the typhoon made landfall Thursday night with winds of more than 100 mph, China Central Television reported.

More than 1,800 people were injured, 185 of them seriously, while 42,000 houses were destroyed and tens of thousands more were damaged, various reports said.

Philippines

17 guerrillas ordered to die for Kansans’ kidnappings

A southern Philippines court sentenced 17 members of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militant group to death Friday for kidnapping nurses from a hospital there three years ago.

Only 13 of the defendants were at the heavily guarded court house in Isabela, capital of the southern Basilan island, where a clerk read the ruling that described a kidnapping spree that began with the mass abduction of more than 50 pupils, teachers and a priest in 2000 and continued with the taking of 17 Filipino tourists and three Americans: missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham, of Wichita, Kan., Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif. Only Gracia Burnham survived.

The four other convicts escaped during a mass jailbreak from the Basilan provincial prison earlier this year and were sentenced in absentia.

Houston

Patient gets new liver after using billboards, Internet

A man’s efforts to get a healthy liver with public pleas, including billboards and a Web site, succeeded as he underwent transplant surgery with a donated organ.

Officials at The Methodist Hospital said Todd Krampitz, 32, was recovering Friday in the intensive care unit, normal for all transplant patients, after successful surgery overnight.

Krampitz, a newlywed, was diagnosed in May with liver cancer and by July his doctors said only a transplant would save his life.

His family mounted a media campaign, including two billboards along a Houston freeway, and a Web site that detailed his plight and raised awareness about organ donation. Krampitz and his wife, Julie, also did national media interviews.

In a statement, Julie Krampitz said “a generous family” donated the organ, and that it was given specifically for her husband.